The Color of Courage

THE COLOR OF COURAGE

NATALIE J. DAMSCHRODER

SOUL MATE PUBLISHING

New York

THE COLOR OF COURAGE

Copyright©2016

NATALIE J. DAMSCHRODER

Cover Design by Syneca Featherstone

This book is a work of fiction.  The names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.  Any resemblance to actual events, business establishments, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher.  The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law.  Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

Published in the United States of America by

Soul Mate Publishing

P.O. Box 24

Macedon, New York, 14502

ISBN: 978-1-68291-082-5

www.SoulMatePublishing.com

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

To everyone out there

who has ever doubted their courage–

you have strength you cannot imagine,

and you are amazing.

Believe it at your core,

and you can do anything.

Acknowledgements

I can never celebrate success of a book without acknowledging a few particular people. First, Lisa Mondello and Cathy McDavid, who have been the most amazing friends anyone could find in such disparate locations as Massachusetts and Arizona. Who’d have guessed we’d be where we are, *mumbleyears* later. 

Next, to my Boot Squad, the local gang who keeps me on track daily and who helped me make this book great when it was merely good: Megan, Misty, Smith, and Bix, I could do none of this without you.  

And to Tracy Madison, my unofficial therapist, who was a close friend from the first time she e-mailed me and said, “Hey, aren’t you…?” No one could ever feel bad about themselves with you on their side.

Acknowledgements aren’t complete without special recognition to the powers who made it happen. To Nephele Tempest, who believed in this book and helped me hone my vision for the story, and to the team at Soul Mate Publishing who gave this book the opportunity it deserves. Thank you!

Chapter 1

The hardest thing for an empath to face is being unable to read the emotions of the people closest to them.

At least, that’s what I assume. Since the only empath I know is me.

The Chanel-suited woman speeding toward the Metro was nervous because she was late. The guy on the bench across from us wore three pairs of sweatpants, four shirts, and a long quilted coat on a fine early June day at Farragut North. He was clearly homeless, with fretful lines worn into his face. But I could see how utterly content he was as he sat in the sun watching the pigeons.

“I swear, Daley, I never wanted to hurt you.”

Ian Halderton, my boyfriend of nearly nine months, was breaking up with me. It would be helpful if I could use my powers to understand why. Whether, for example, his feelings for me were indifferent, affectionate, angry, or resentful. Whether it was something resolvable. But it was a quirk of my ability that I couldn’t read someone’s emotions when they related to me.

“There’s someone else,” I guessed.

He flinched. “Not like that. I did meet someone. And I like her. A lot. But we haven’t done anything. She doesn’t even know I’m attracted to her.”

I stared at him. “You’re dumping me for a woman you don’t know?”

“I know her. Sort of. She lives in my building, and we sat next to each other at the last tenant’s meeting. She was very involved in the discussion . . . and, Dale . . .” I could read his infatuation for her in his aura then, and I knew, no matter how much hope I might have harbored, it was all over. For good.

“It doesn’t even matter if anything happens with her.” His voice was low. “If I can feel this way about another woman, it says something about our future, you know? Yours and mine.”

What could I say? He was right. But that didn’t make it any easier.

Nothing ever did.

I headed back to work reluctantly. None of my colleagues at HQ, Washington DC’s only superhero agency, would need empathy to know what I was feeling; it was still too new and raw for me to easily hide.

I tried not to think of all the ways Ian and I had been good together, or how I could have screwed it up. The “at leasts” marched through my head. Like,
at least
we weren’t living together, or
at least
I hadn’t left stuff in his apartment. They didn’t make me feel any better.

I walked into our modest building with a burning in my stomach that had nothing to do with the burrito I’d had for lunch. I wondered who would be in the office and how long I’d have to endure their sympathy and offers to squash Ian. Offers that, in an agency of superheroes, weren’t metaphorical.

I needn’t have worried.

“Grab your suit, Daley, we need you on this one.” Adam followed Summer and Trace past me out the door. Adam didn’t usually wear a suit. His impenetrable skin was good enough. Trace was already suited up, and Summer got hers on as she ran, her hands moving so fast the pieces seemed to materialize on her.

Not for the first time, I wished I had Kirby’s summoning powers. I ran as fast as I could to the back room, snatched my suit and gear bag, and followed them to the van.

“What’s going on?” I asked as I hopped in and Trace took off, nearly knocking me over as he peeled out into the alley behind the agency. Adam was on a cell phone, receiving directions from someone and relaying them to Trace, so Summer filled me in.

“Smash-and-grab at a jewelry store, four guys, but they didn’t just grab diamonds, they grabbed a kid. It worked, because security backed off, but the mother’s hysterical. The cops can’t get a description of her son from her, and the whole thing happened so fast, none of the others in the store got a good enough look at any of them.” She frowned at me. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I kept my face averted and zipped my high-tech, bullet-and-blade-proof jacket before struggling to get my feet into the pants as Trace careened around corners. “Why’d they call us in?”

“The store is in the lobby of a large building. The owner set off the alarm, which shut down all outside access. But the building is huge, and there are a ton of people inside.”

I managed to get the pants pulled up and fastened, then stomped into my boots and dragged the flexi-shield over my head, making sure all the hair in my long blond ponytail was tucked inside. Summer didn’t have to tell me any more. Not every job we got needed an empath. Most didn’t, in fact, which was why I had plenty of time to spend on my “day” job. But in a case like this, where the perps were invisible to regular people and even my invincible colleagues, I could sense them. It didn’t matter how big the building was, I’d find their hiding place. Hopefully before they hurt the kid.

“How close?” I called to Adam, who’d hung up his phone.

He picked my glove up off the floor and handed it to me. “We’ll park the next block up, walk over. The police will give us access to the building. Trace, you wait downstairs.” Trace’s skills of endurance and concentration were best for chase-downs, and he’d be ready for anyone who might make a break for it. “Daley, you locate the four grabbers and the kid, then be prepared to take control of the boy.” Adam seemed to think I was motherly, maybe because I was the oldest of six kids. It wasn’t a notion I disabused him of, but it wasn’t exactly true. “Summer and I will go in for them,” he continued. “Keep coms on and be flexible.”

We switched on the units in our flexi-shields as Trace pulled to the curb. I slung my gear bag over my shoulder and adjusted my right glove. Adam had the side door open and we all hopped out almost before the van stopped moving.

I always loved the picture we made, striding purposefully toward danger, gazed at in awe and envy by the regular people. Our suits were gray and white and fitted, not super-tight, super-bright Lycra, and our flexi-shields weren’t as sexy as a cape. But it didn’t matter that we weren’t straight out of the comic books. The people watching us knew who we were and why we were there, and for that few seconds, I could absorb their confidence in the team and pretend I felt it myself.

The truth was, our clothes weren’t the only things about us that didn’t match the comics. HQ wasn’t some amazing justice league. It was a rinky-dinkish agency that had taken years to build respect with local law enforcement. Our jobs weren’t all rescues and roses. Sometimes things went wrong, and every time we went out on a call, we knew how low our odds were. Our abilities made us super—some of us more than others—but inside the cool jackets, we were only human.

This time, a kid’s life was at stake. It wouldn’t take much for those looks of awe to turn to disgust. I’d seen it happen far too often.

But I worked hard not to remember that now. At this moment, in perception only, we were perfect. If we harnessed that, we could make it reality.

So we strode in confident formation across the stamped concrete courtyard in front of the building, zeroing in on the far right entrance where two cops blocked a regular doorway. The revolving doors were more dramatic, but also harder to secure, so they were locked down and barred.

The cop, one we’d worked with before, nodded at Adam as he opened the door, then watched each of us go in and locked it behind us. Another cop wearing a tag that said
Hurley
met us immediately inside.

“We’ve corralled movement as much as we could,” he told us in a low voice as we circled him, “but we’re really thin on manpower. They could be anywhere.”

“What’s the layout of the building?” Adam asked.

“Retail downstairs, all lobby access with office space behind each one and an exit into a back hall.” Hurley pointed toward the central walkway, which displayed elevator signs and a wooden door at the end. The lobby itself was shaped like a jewel, with the entrance bowing across the front and half a dozen glass-fronted shops angling toward that central hall.

“The building office is behind there,” the cop went on, pointing at the wooden door, “and it’s a warren of offices and cubes. There are back elevators and three sets of stairs. I’ve got someone stationed at all of them, but that doesn’t leave me many to do a walk-through.”

“What’s upstairs?” Summer asked.

“Residences and offices, eight floors of ’em.” He shook his head, but it could be a lot worse. We could be in New York, with nearly a hundred floors, instead of height-restricted Washington, DC.

“Okay, let’s go. Daley, what do you feel?”

I walked to the center of the lobby, closing my eyes. Emotions wafted like colored smoke, the remnants of the people who’d been in here earlier. My team was solid green in my peripheral vision. They’d learned how to stay out of my “sight” when I did this.

Hurley was orange and fluttery, full of anxiety, but I could skip past him readily enough. Inside the stores I sensed the same anxiety but with less purpose, less responsibility. Store clerks and shoppers who had been caught by the alarm, most of whom had no clue what was going on.

I dug for nuances, finding only the expected. I reached invisible feelers across the entire first floor, finding and discarding every person as I went. A few, for whatever reason, didn’t have the jangling fear the others did, but none of those carried the distinctive mix of emotions the criminals would have, or the terror and shame of the child. I couldn’t “feel” walls and furniture, but could imagine the layout of the building based on the locations of the people, and there was an abrupt change when I got to the edges of the building and hit the outside.

I opened my eyes. “First floor’s clear,” I said.

Adam went into action. “You can start evacuating the people on this floor,” he told the cops, moving with me and Summer toward the elevators. “We’ll need one operational elevator. Keep the others locked down and the stairs covered. Got a radio?” He caught the one the cop tossed him and ran the rest of the way to the elevators. “Can you feel the next floor up?” he asked me.

“Wait,” Hurley called after us. “How does she know? I mean, can’t these guys fool her?”

I bit back an irritated response. It wasn’t a stupid question. HQ had been publicized well enough, our abilities known enough, that someone might think they could fool the empath. They could try to emulate the emotions of the innocents surrounding them. But few people understood the complexities of human emotion. Not that I did, completely, but I did know it was impossible to fake it.

There wasn’t time to try to explain, though. The building might be locked down, but the kidnapped boy and any other people in the criminals’ way were in danger.

I let Adam, our diplomat, hang back to explain. The calm green in his aura paled, showing his patience, and only flickered once with red. It always fascinated me, watching him deal with people and seeing the underpinnings of what made him a good leader.

Summer grabbed the elevator key and we sprinted to open it. Adam rejoined us a moment later and asked if I could sense the next floor up.

I concentrated. “Only part of it.” I turned in a circle and told him which rooms on the second floor were either clear or held innocents. Adam relayed the information to the others as we went up in the elevator, and I kept my eyes closed, focusing as far as possible into the building.

Adam was our point guard. Since little could break his skin and his enhanced hearing could detect anyone coming, he always went first. It made me nervous. He wasn’t invincible, but he often acted like it. Because he was older than the rest of us, he took total responsibility. I was afraid someday he’d make the sacrifice he was willing to make, and I didn’t want to confront how I felt about that.

He stepped out of the elevator, checking both ways before motioning us out. We spread out, the coms enabling us to keep our voices low.

The elevator put us near the center of the building, so I was able to do the same scan I had downstairs. I shook my head, and Adam spoke into the radio before we got back into the elevator. Three floors later, I halted as soon as we stepped out.

“Someone’s hurt.” I swiveled and started moving to the right, but Adam grabbed my arm.

“Daley, slow down.”

He was right. I tried to isolate the woman in pain and “see” who was around her. Friends, caring strangers, others who wanted to help but didn’t know how.

“They’re not with her, but others are. She’s . . .” I concentrated. I couldn’t read minds, but impressions of what was causing an emotion would usually get through. “I think she’s been shot. But they’ve moved on. They’re not at that end of the building.” I searched and caught a tendril, a remnant of anger, fear, and glee all braided together. “This floor is clear, but they went up the stairs.”

“Is the boy still with them?”

“I can’t tell.”

Adam relayed the info and urged them to get paramedics upstairs immediately, then led us to the stairwell. He hesitated with one foot on the bottom step.

“Voices,” he said
sotto voce
, so the only way we could hear his words was over the coms. “Three. No, four.” He paused, listening. “Maybe the kid whimpering, hard to tell. It’s at least two floors up, but the stairwell door is open. I think they’re right near it.”

He looked at me and I nodded. It was them. I could feel them without even trying. “There are a lot of people near them,” I warned. “I can’t tell if they’re separated by walls or not.”

“Okay.” Adam examined the stairs above us. They were the typical pattern, twelve steps per half-flight before they angled. No matter how quiet we were, our feet would echo on the concrete and the acoustics would amplify the rustles of our suits. I could tell Adam was considering and discarding half a dozen plans, and that none of them were going to work.

“Diversion,” I murmured. “We need Trace to catch their attention so you two can corner them and I can get the boy.”

Summer ducked out of the stairwell to contact Trace. Adam looked displeased, but knew I was right. He pushed me by the upper arm back into the hall and held the door behind us until it clicked closed.